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Employers not as open to hiring ex-cons as they claim

Posted July 27, 2005; 05:28 p.m.

by Jennifer Greenstein Altmann

When it comes to hiring ex-offenders, employers will say one thing
but do another, researchers from Princeton and Northwestern
universities found in a new study.

More than 60 percent of employers in the study claimed to be willing to
hire an individual recently convicted of a drug crime. When actually
confronted with such an applicant, however, fewer than 20 percent even
offered that individual an interview, according to the study, published
in the June issue of the American Sociological Review. The paper's
authors — Devah Pager, an assistant professor at Princeton, and Lincoln
Quillian, an associate professor at Northwestern — also found that
black applicants were far less likely to receive call-backs than white
applicants, despite what employers' own reports indicated.

The study, performed in Milwaukee, was conducted in two stages. First a
group of male college students with fictitious resumes, some of which
bore evidence of a felony drug conviction, were sent out in pairs to
apply for a total of 350 similar entry-level jobs. Half the applicants
were white, and half were black. Their resumes gave them comparable
qualifications, which fit the advertised job descriptions.

In the second stage, which occurred several months later, the same 350
employers were asked in a telephone survey to rate their likelihood of
hiring an ex-offender. Some employers were asked about their likelihood
of hiring an ex-offender described as black, some described as white
(no direct racial comparisons were involved).

In the telephone survey, more than 60 percent of the employers said
they were somewhat or very likely to hire a drug offender irrespective
of the applicant's race, the study found. When actual job applicants
who appeared to be ex-offenders were involved, only 17 percent of the
white applicants and 5 percent of the black applicants received
call-backs for an interview or a job offer from the same employers.

In addition to pointing out discrimination in hiring practices, the
study shows the weaknesses of relying on self-reporting as a way to
evaluate people's actions. Pager advocates explicitly testing one's
assumptions by directly observing when and how attitudes match with
corresponding behavior.

"These results cast strong doubt on the accuracy of survey data for
indicating relative likelihoods of hiring," said Pager, who has been a
member of the Princeton sociology department since 2004. She studies
institutions affecting racial stratification, including education,
labor markets and the criminal justice system. Her book on
discrimination against minorities and ex-offenders will be published
next year by the University of Chicago Press.

Pager also is the co-author of a recent study of 1,500 private
employers in New York City that found that black applicants without
criminal records are no more likely to get a job than white applicants
just out of prison.